


Interpreting the Final Page

by samariumwriting



Series: These Echoes of the Past [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Investigations, M/M, Past Character Death, Reincarnation, Trans Caspar von Bergliez, Trans Linhardt von Hevring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Caspar returns home after a weekend away to a breakthrough in Linhardt's research: the final chapter of The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas, the book he's been studying his whole career, has been unearthed.Together, they piece together the truth of the novel's elusive - but definitely not heterosexual - protagonists.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Series: These Echoes of the Past [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023220
Comments: 20
Kudos: 38
Collections: Casphardt Minibang 2020





	Interpreting the Final Page

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the Casphardt Mini Bang! I worked with August (perpetuallydistressedninja on discord, they don't have another social media to link) and you can see it on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/samariumwriting/status/1330547989560111109?s=20)!
> 
> This fic is also the first part of a loose series of interconnected but standalone oneshots so if you fancy more ~gays studying themselves~ in the future then those will happen...eventually

**1st Blue Sea Moon, Imperial year 2024**

Caspar fumbled with the door key as he attempted to unlock the front door. He'd been away all weekend, and somehow he was expecting the house to be a complete disaster zone by now. Especially as a certain someone hadn't answered _any_ of his texts. Not a single one, not since he got on the bus to leave Enbarr.

So, it was no surprise when he opened the door to shoes discarded by the doorstep and a coat slung over the shoe rack. Linhardt never put things in their intended place (though, even as he thought that, Caspar kicked his shoes off right next to his boyfriend's and dumped his coat right on top. So maybe he couldn't talk), so no shock there. No clues, either.

The kitchen, too, was a complete mess. There was at least a day's worth of unwashed dishes, and it looked like Linhardt had used the same plate for lunch and dinner; there were two stains of very different colours which betrayed that fact (and the fact that Linhardt had, seemingly, raided the fridge for leftovers rather than cooking anything new). Nothing was put away, including all the clean dishes in the dishwasher.

It was when Caspar made his way through the kitchen that he found the source of all of this - including Linhardt's disappearance for the last few days. In the low light of late evening combined with a single high powered desk lamp, Linhardt hunched over a veritable library of papers. They stretched all across the medium sized Ikea dining table that Caspar had put together while Linhardt directed him from the sofa with poorly worded instructions.

Some of the stacks were several centimetres high, and at one spot there was a stack of at _least_ seven books of varying thicknesses (and, inevitably, value - how Linhardt managed to wrangle so much book money from his otherwise stick up his ass father was beyond him). In the centre of it all was Linhardt, hair down, glasses askew, and his head balanced almost precariously on his hand as he stared down at everything.

Caspar's boyfriend, unsurprisingly, had got caught up in his research again.

"Evening, Linhardt," he said, tipping him a wave. Linhardt startled at the sound; even though Caspar had just come in through the front door and all the rooms of the flat so far to get to him, he hadn't realised he was here. That… wasn't a surprise.

“Oh, Caspar,” Linhardt said. He blinked sleepily, but there was a light behind his eyes that only reinforced what Caspar already knew - Linhardt had a whole ton of energy. That _usually_ meant he’d found something that’d caught his interest. “Hello.”

He said it as if he hadn’t given Caspar a heart attack by not texting for two whole days. Forty eight hours! While Caspar was out of the house! "You didn't reply to my texts," he said lamely. He knew what the response would be already.

"You texted?" Linhardt asked. His phone was nowhere to be seen - probably in the bedroom. Maybe the bathroom. Could be anywhere, really.

"A few times." Probably a good fifty, plus twenty or so photos. Would have been more if the photographer had actually sent things through like they said they would. "Did you make a breakthrough or something?"

“Did I make a _breakthrough?”_ Linhardt’s voice was so filled with excitement that Caspar couldn’t help but smile in spite of all the worry the man had put him through. “Someone found the last chapter of The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas!”

“Seriously?” Caspar asked. He didn’t know a ton about Linhardt’s job or all the things he did with it, but he knew that The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas was a big deal. The final chapter had been lost to time for years. Centuries, maybe.

"Totally serious," Linhardt said.

"Huh." Yeah, that was… well, it was big. A breakthrough didn't really cut it as a descriptor. "Neat." Linhardt nodded, and when his head bobbed, the light caught the shadows under his eyes. "Hey, Lin, dearest partner mine."

"Mmmhmmm," Linhardt hummed, his eyes already straying back to the papers in front of him.

"When did you last sleep?"

"Um."

Yeah, that said it all, and Caspar wasn't surprised either. "So, ages ago," he clarified. Linhardt nodded. "Well, you can get back to what you're doing. I'll put some food on."

Linhardt smiled. Caspar had long since given up on telling him to stop; he stopped when he wanted or needed to. Maybe bringing him food would make him realise the latter.

It didn't take long to put something together: he put the kettle on, threw a couple things into the frying pan, and had a meal ready within minutes. He carried the plates and mugs out to the small living area - also taken over by books but not quite as much as the table they'd normally eat off of - and called Linhardt over.

"I don't know why you insisted on this," Linhardt said, accepting the mug of angelica tea. "I've been looking after myself just fine."

Caspar raised an eyebrow and, as if on cue, Linhardt's stomach rumbled. Linhardt shot him a sheepish smile and sat down on the sofa, letting Caspar push one of the plates towards him. "So, how's it going?" he asked.

Linhardt smiled, his eyes alight and his rice balanced precariously on his fork as he replied. "It's going pretty well so far," he said. "The final chapter is, naturally, fascinating."

"What's in it?" he asked, leaning back with his plate balanced carefully on his lap. If he was right (and if getting Linhardt to take a substantial break all went to plan), they were going to be here a while. He may as well get comfortable.

"So much," Linhardt replied. "Mostly a narrative conclusion to their travels together. Well, the characters' travels, but… you know. They're people, probably. Anyway, it's a lot about the end of their journey and the place they ended up settling. It's a little ambiguous, there's mention of them going on more travels together, but it seems to be an end of sorts. At least, we don't know of another written work."

For the most part, Caspar smiled and nodded as Linhardt divulged every detail. It wasn't that he wasn't interested or anything like that, but more that Linhardt could carry the conversation on his own far better. All he did was interject with a few questions when the time seemed right.

There were already portions Linhardt had memorised, so he ended up getting a few quotes, at which point Linhardt nearly pulled it out and started reading the whole thing to him. "I'll read it tomorrow," Caspar promised. "It's getting late."

Linhardt glanced up at the clock. "So it is," he said. He looked down at his now empty plate and drained the last of the tea, now cold. "Perhaps we should head to bed."

Caspar grinned. "You read my mind, Lin," he said. "Let's go."

* * *

When Caspar woke up to the sun coming through their maybe slightly too cheap curtains (but it was totally worth it, because they had dinosaurs on them and Caspar was an adult who would buy his _own_ dumb shit for his home), the mattress next to him was already cold; Linhardt was back at his research, again.

Caspar smiled as he got out of bed and made his way to the dining room; this was going to be one of Those Things, and Linhardt would probably be at it day in and day out until he cracked it.

"Morning, Linhardt," Caspar greeted; Linhardt was in almost exactly the same position as the night before, but now his legs were tucked under him. "Had anything to eat this morning?"

"No," Linhardt admitted, flipping over a piece of paper. "I can do that now, though, if you insist."

"I do," Caspar replied. Linhardt let out a long, weary sigh, as if eating were the hardest thing in the world, and stood from his chair. Caspar heard at least one of his bones click, which was sort of a mood but also slightly concerning.

"So talk me through it," he said, once they were both sitting on the sofa with a bowl of cereal. "What are you working on right now? Not just stuff about the final chapter, I know you must have a way into something even cooler."

"Not anything specific, actually," Linhardt said with a laugh. "It's only been a few days. Right now, I'm sorting through my old research notes to find references to the final chapter in other texts. Then, I'll look at what they're not talking about."

That made sense, he supposed. He'd talked enough with Linhardt about these things to get an idea of the process and such, but it was never completely clear to him. He was _not_ an academic. "What will you do with that, once you have it?"

"Oh, that's easy," Linhardt said. "I'll go back through the whole text - that's the whole book, not just that chapter - and see what the exclusions could mean. It's taking a while, but I've found one or two things already."

"Like what?" It wasn't hard to show Linhardt his interest; while he was super, super far from being an academic, he cared a lot about the text in his own way. He really wasn't kidding when he said he'd get round to reading it soon.

"My theories were right," Linhardt said, his right hand flung outwards. A little milk and a single piece of cereal splattered onto the wall. "The protagonist and his travelling partner were almost _definitely_ a couple. At the very least, neither of them were returning to anyone else once the war ended."

"Oh?" Caspar asked. "How can you know that?"

"Well, you know how all the extracts we've seen so far are dry?" Linhardt asked. Caspar nodded; the lengthiest quote from the final chapter that had been found in another text was one about water levels in a river. It was dry in more ways than one. "The rest of them are pretty much anything but."

"Go on."

"Hang on," he said, practically sprinting (as much as Linhardt moved fast, anyway) to the table to grab his tablet. "Page twenty seven of the last chapter. 'When they finally settled on a patch of land, Linhardt looked to Caspar and smiled; it was perfect. The house was a little old and run down, but they weren't in any hurry to find something perfect; just somewhere to live out their time together, away from the fast pace that often consumed the rest of the world.' Fairly self explanatory, isn't it?"

"Sounds pretty gay," Caspar agreed with a nod. Linhardt laughed. "Why weren't people talking about that in the past, then?"

Linhardt shrugged. "Homophobia, most likely," he said. "It usually is when it comes to these kinds of things. No one wants to admit that maybe this literary genius cared about things beyond the pen and paper in front of him. But I think..." He shook his head. "I don't know. I just feel like there's something else, too. I don't know what it is yet, but I'll find it."

* * *

Caspar was preparing some vegetables for their dinner when he heard a shout come from the dining room. "Got you, Caspar!" Linhardt called.

Caspar frowned and put the knife down, making his way back into the dining room. "You called?" he asked, knowing full well that Linhardt probably didn't mean _him._

"No, not you," Linhardt said, a small laugh escaping his mouth. "The other Caspar. The original. I just made a breakthrough!" When he looked up from the papers, his eyes were bright, and a smile lit up his whole face.

"Oh?" he asked. Despite the fact that Caspar was one of the two central protagonists of The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas, basically nothing was known about him or who he might represent (other than the fact that, in Caspar's non-professional opinion, the Linhardt of the books was clearly besotted with him).

"Well, we know that Linhardt in the book is _probably_ Linhardt von Hevring, given the date of publication," Linhardt said. That much, he knew. "But! In the final chapter, they talk about journeys and the time they've spent together, and that references the place they first met. I looked it up, and..."

"And?" Caspar didn't usually have to feign excitement when talking about Linhardt's studies, but this was something else. This was _big._

"It's a real place, with a real family who governed it. I looked at the family trees for the period, and in one of the records - not all of them, though, for some reason there's some confusion about names of children - there appears one Caspar von Bergliez."

"Tell me about him," he said, plonking himself down in the chair opposite Linhardt. The dinner could definitely wait.

"Caspar von Bergliez appears to be the second or perhaps third child of one Mann von Bergliez, who died in 1186. The von Bergliez family have a fairly complicated family history at this point, there are some mixed records and remarriages, but their territory persisted after the war. I'd have to check the monastic records, but it appears that our Caspar attended the Officers Academy with Linhardt von Hevring."

"That's really cool," he whispered, awe leaking plainly into his tone. He didn't know why he felt the need to be quiet, but it was just... "That's cool. Wow."

Once upon a time, back when they were both kids, Caspar went to Linhardt and asked him if he had any suggestions for his new name. On that day, Linhardt suggested the name of his favourite book character's best friend - after all, if they were the same and _Linhardt_ had named himself after the book, then it would be cool if Caspar did too.

They'd never looked back, but now the book was basically Linhardt's life, it was pretty neat. Weird, but neat. "When did they meet?" he asked. "Does the book say?"

Linhardt smiled. "They seem to have been childhood friends, actually," he said.

"Like us. Weird." Coincidence sure was a strange creature, huh.

"Definitely," Linhardt replied. "But still very interesting. This is a _fantastic_ new lead, so I need to keep working on it." And with that, he returned his gaze to his tablet, probably going to flick back through a bunch of records - maybe even records that no one had ever considered could hold the truth of the The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas protagonists.

Caspar went back to his vegetables with a strange energy coursing through his veins. This wasn't even his achievement, but it felt _special._ It felt incredible, even, and he couldn't wait to see what came out of it - he couldn't even imagine how Linhardt felt about all of it.

* * *

Caspar had already been asleep for a while by the time Linhardt entered the bedroom. It was completely dark, so it must have been pretty late - there wasn't even the sound of cars outside. Just Linhardt, quietly opening the door and getting ready for bed.

He blinked a few times before turning over, letting Linhardt know he was awake. Linhardt didn't apologise for waking him - he rarely did, unless it was really late or Caspar had asked him not to. When Linhardt's movements just as he went to pull back his side of the duvet stuttered, however, Caspar sat up.

"Do you want to talk?" he asked, his voice quiet and a little rough with sleep. "Looks like you have something on your mind."

Linhardt nodded. "I was just… thinking about what this means," he said, settling down under the blankets next to him.

“What do you mean?” Caspar asked.

"Well, it's an ending, isn't it?" he answered. Caspar looked at him questioningly. "I've dedicated my whole career to understanding everything about this man's work. I've pored over every line countless times, hoping to uncover each secret, each ambiguity. And now I have the last piece. Where do I even go from here? Is there even any point to this?"

The look on Linhardt's face was easy to make out, even in the darkness. It joined the near-hopelessness in his tone and Caspar leaned in, putting a steady arm around him. He didn't know if this would help, but he could try. "Just keep going," he said.

"I know that works for _you,_ Caspar, but it's not always the same for the rest of us."

"Not like that," he said, nudging his shoulder against Linhardt's in a way he hoped was part comforting and part teasing. "I mean… these books have existed for so many years, way longer than anyone has been alive. Tons of people dedicated their lives to understanding this dude, just like you, and you never ran out of stuff to do before. So why now?"

Those rare, tense lines in Linhardt's face eased, and he slumped against Caspar's side. "You're right," he said. "Yes. That's what I'll do. Thank you, Caspar."

Caspar lowered his arm then, circling it around Linhardt's waist and pulling him ever closer. "You're doing a fantastic job with this," he said, "and it's going to be okay, alright?"

Linhardt nodded. "Yes," he said. Caspar counted the seconds between his breaths; Linhardt was steadying himself, piece by piece. They sat in silence like that for a while, just the pair of them, until Caspar almost thought Linhardt had fallen asleep. "There's no point worrying about it now, but there's plenty of point to sleeping."

Despite everything, Caspar chuckled, lowering himself to the bed once more with Linhardt right behind him. Eventually, Linhardt's hand fell onto his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. Everything that needed to be said now out in the open, they were finally able to drift off once more.

* * *

A few days later, Caspar was in his makeshift office when he heard a long groan of frustration from the living room.

"What's the matter, Linhardt?" Caspar asked, putting one of the five brightly coloured highlighters down. There was enough time left in the summer that he could definitely afford to leave lesson planning for another day.

Instead, he rose from his desk and made his way over to the living room, where Linhardt was - as he had been pretty much all the time in the last week - surrounded by books. He probably couldn't help with the problem itself, sure, but Linhardt always said it helped to have someone to bounce off of.

"It's the very ending of the book," Linhardt said. "I've been discussing it with a colleague over in Almyra for a while, and she thinks it's not actually about them ending their journey, just ending the narration of it. They kept moving on, beyond the pages of the book."

“That makes sense,” Caspar said.

"When I heard her arguments I was inclined to agree, but now I've read the passage through a few more times..." Linhardt sighed and stared back down at the tablet once more. "Now, I'm not sure."

"Alright," Caspar said. "Read me the passage?"

"I've read too many times," Linhardt said with a soft laugh. "I don't think the words mean anything anymore. It goes: 'There are many things in this world, and one by one, they must come to an end. And yet, writing at this desk with the evening sun streaming through the window, I rather prefer the notion that some things are infinite, and continue long beyond the time people cease to write of them.'"

Caspar kicked his feet up underneath him; he got the feeling he'd be here for a while. "Hmm, that's tricky," he said. "It sounds philosophical to me. Kinda melancholic, too? It's all… infinites and endings and things that can and cannot be. Sounds a little sad, really."

"Maybe Caspar died," Linhardt said, his voice suddenly very quiet.

A moment. Something struck Caspar's heart there, but he couldn't tell what it was. An instant in time, only half felt, brushed away as easily as a leaf battered by the wind. "Maybe," he agreed, "but wouldn't the author just say it, if that happened? Caspar is kind of important."

"Probably," Linhardt said with a shrug, and the moment passed. Warmth returned to his limbs. "I can't think of any reason that he'd be so melancholic, though. If it even _is_ melancholy."

"Maybe it's just because they decided not to travel anymore," he suggested. "It's sorta like… you know when you said that you felt kinda bad about the text coming to an end? You've spent ages on it, and he spent ages travelling. Sometimes things ending is sad for no reason other than that."

Linhardt nodded, and his gaze drifted back towards the page in front of him. "Still, I want to know," he decided. "I'll see if I can find where some more records on Caspar might be held. Anything _searchable_ disappears during the war, but that doesn't mean there's nothing."

It's a familiar story, and something that Caspar's heard several times in Linhardt's various rants about the difficulties of studying that period of time in any description - during the war, people lost things. They broke ties, burned records, sacked cities. People vanished off the face of the records, never to be seen again, and left behind only a scholar scratching their head centuries later.

"Good luck," he said, swinging his legs back to the floor and standing once more. "I'll leave you to it, but I'm glad I could help. Let me know if you need a hand again!"

* * *

Another week saw them making their way out of the city for the first time in a while. Linhardt had, after a handful of emails and long hours spent trawling through a poorly digitised archival catalogue, finally worked out which papers in the Bergliez family archives _might_ hold some hint of one Caspar von Bergliez.

"Are you sure you want to drive?" Linhardt asked, and Caspar just about resisted the urge to tell him to sit up; he never sat properly, and getting him to do so was a lost cause.

"I always drive," he replied.

Linhardt nodded. "I can drive, you know." The fact that Linhardt was a terrible driver went unsaid - Caspar could tell that was exactly why he suggested it from the quirk of his lips alone. "But you do it every time. Like when we go out to the Hevring estate to look at _their_ documents."

"I'm fine with driving," he said firmly. "Besides, you gotta save your brain energy for these dusty old manuscripts."

"If I find anything at all," Linhardt said with a sigh. He turned to look out of the window, taking in the sights as the buildings of Enbarr started to fade into fields. "I'm not hopeful. The reason we never go to the Hevring estate anymore is because Linhardt disappeared partway through the war and never comes up in their records again - I'd hazard a guess that Caspar is the same."

Caspar shrugged. "Hopefully we'll still find something," he said. "Hey, maybe we'll even walk in the same places that the Caspar of old did! That's pretty exciting, right?"

Linhardt laughed. "Perhaps we will. Or perhaps they tore the whole building down in the fifteenth century and there's nothing left of it."

It turned out that Linhardt was right - when they arrived, it was to a building that definitely wasn't built before the Great Fódlan War. "Good morning!" greeted the person who stood at the exit to the car park. "You're the couple here to look at the archives?"

Linhardt nodded. "Yes," he said. "Though before we get going, I must ask… is there much remaining of the building from the period we're looking at?"

Their guide frowned and shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said. "The whole place burned down in the fourteenth century, and they've rebuilt various wings on and off ever since until about a hundred years ago. There's the walled garden, though, which we believe is original. I could show you there if you were interested!"

"Not just now," Linhardt replied. "Maybe later, once we've got some work done. Are the papers out?"

There were a _lot_ of papers to go through once they arrived in the library of the house. Stacks and stacks of them, filled with letters and numbers Caspar barely recognised. After sifting through page after page, each one containing the name Bergliez ten times over if not more, it was hard to find what they were looking for.

There was a lot on Caspar's father. Though the records could have been skewed in his favour, being created by his family, it seemed like Mann von Bergliez was a fairly highly regarded general. He died during the war, it seemed, but that entry held no mention of Caspar. Very few of them did - there was a reference to a book here and an axe there, but nothing conclusive. Nothing that said that Caspar was any more than the second son of an Empire noble.

Eventually, however... "I think I found something!" Linhardt said, his voice shaking just a little. "From whoever was managing the estate in the year 1216. 'An unannounced visit today threw the manor into a frenzy. Caspar, the late Count's second son, arrived with his spouse and their child.' That's him, no doubt."

"But the spouse? The kid?" Caspar asked.

Linhardt looked down at the record again. "It could be anyone, or mean anything," he admitted. "A wife, or otherwise. That could be Linhardt or any manner of unnamed people - including ones we've never heard of. The child… without a birth record, or a name, or even some marker of adoption, there's no way of knowing. This could be based on legal fact or simply what Caspar told whoever wrote this."

"Or an assumption someone made when they visited," Caspar added. Linhardt nodded. "Damn," he said. "Guess we keep looking for something else?" Linhardt nodded again, and they both returned to the papers.

Hours later, Caspar let out a long sigh and rolled his shoulders. Everything ached. "We calling it a day?" he asked. It looked like Linhardt was about to nod off directly into a centuries old manuscript, and it wouldn't be the first time either.

Linhardt blinked, looked down at the page in front of him, and nodded. "We'll come back, though," he said. "What we found, even though it was small, could point to a lot more. There's probably something else that's useful, we just have to keep looking."

Caspar nodded. "Soooo..." he said, very carefully closing the ledger in front of him. It still coughed out a little dust that almost definitely shouldn't have been there, but what did he know about document upkeep? "Walled garden?"

Linhardt's face lit up. "Walled garden," he agreed.

It wasn't too hard to find, once they managed to get a hold of one of the manor's inhabitants. She pointed them out through several carefully kept lawns, right down to the edge of the premises. Beyond, a now-privately-owned forest stretched out further than they could see, but that wasn't what they were there for.

The walled garden itself was small, and the stone that had probably once surrounded the slightly overgrown bushes were far squatter than Caspar had expected. The whole area was dominated by what could only be described as an absolutely _ancient_ oak tree - its branches rambled more than stretched across the space, light leaves spreading dappled shade onto the ground below.

Linhardt sat down heavily with his back against the old, knobbly trunk, and after a moment Caspar joined him. They sat in silence, for a while, and eventually Caspar's hand found Linhardt's against the dirt. As he looked up through the branches to the pale blue sky beyond, he was struck with a feeling of something close to nostalgia.

"Hey, Linhardt?" he murmured. Linhardt didn't look over, his eyes closed, but he squeezed Caspar's hand to let him know he was listening. "Do you think that maybe, a really long time ago, the Caspar and Linhardt of ages past sat in this spot?"

Now, Linhardt opened his eyes, and there was an unfathomable curiosity held within. Caspar fell in love all over again. "Perhaps," he said. "I think it's fairly likely."

* * *

They came back to the old Bergliez estate just over a week later to look for yet more material on Caspar. This, too, was a slog - in the wake of war, there were hundreds of things to be done and seemingly no heir around to tell everyone what needed to be done. There were no orders recorded in the ledgers, but there certainly were endless debates and back and forths and-

"Oh, I found something," Caspar said. He blinked at the page in front of him, unsure if it really said what he thought it did. Somehow, it didn't feel real. "It's..."

Linhardt looked over his shoulder. "Oh," he said, and his voice sounded just as small as Caspar felt. He didn't know _why_ he felt that way, but looking at the words felt- wrong. Somehow.

'19th Blue Sea Moon, Imperial Year 1237. Received news from Caspar's spouse of his date of death. He is buried in the village of his home, Remire.'

Caspar chuckled, a little nervously. "What a coincidence, huh? The date, I mean."

Linhardt nodded. "Definitely," he said, his fingers tracing the words on the page. Caspar still felt cold, and curiously far away.

Beyond the library, the sun came out, shining through one of the windows high above. The light struck Linhardt's face, and Caspar felt warmth return to his chest. "You know what this means though, right?" he asked, trying to force a little energy into his tone.

Linhardt looked down at the page once more, and now the shadow in his eyes faded, replaced once more by the light of curiosity. "We have a location!" he said. "Remire Village. Oh, I wonder if the name has changed, or how far away it is. We need to go there as soon as possible, there might be something more!"

Caspar grinned. "Maybe not as _soon_ as possible," he said with a laugh. Linhardt looked at him questioningly. "Maybe the spouse or kid will come up again in the stuff we have left."

Restrained for now, Linhardt nodded, and they both returned to scouring the old, dusty documents. But the hints of the past of the estate got fewer and farther between - it came under the jurisdiction of a new lord, and the name Bergliez faded almost entirely. There was nothing else on a child or a partner, leaving them with only the wisps of the past; not even a name.

They came away from that particular search disappointed, but there was one thing left to do. "I searched for the name Remire Village, and nothing much came back," Linhardt complained. "Nothing that gives me a location, anyway."

Caspar groaned, looking up at the shelves around them. "Which of these are the old maps?" he asked. Some of the shelves were high, and it looked like a bunch of the really big, old stuff was right at the top. He'd have to use a ladder.

"Right up there," Linhardt replied with a grin, pointing towards the upper left corner of the furthest shelf from them. Caspar groaned louder, very glad that there was no one else in there to hear them.

With a bit more shouting that they probably shouldn't have been doing and lots of pointing, climbing, and trying not to drop a heavy book on Linhardt's head, Caspar finally got the maps down from before the war. There were tiny holes in it everywhere, and significant signs of use - even a wine ring in one corner. It was definitely a well-used object.

"I'll have to get someone interested in maps on this one," Linhardt said with a smile. He ran his hands very gently over the surface. "This might have been used to plan battles in the Great Fódlan War."

"Sure looks like it," Caspar said. He surveyed the huge map, now spread out on the largest table in the room. Even then, there was a section off to the south they'd left folded up for now. "So, we're looking for Remire?"

Linhardt nodded. "We have no idea where it is, and we can't assume any particular location - if it's even marked at all. Nothing in the records mentioned even the country this village is in."

Caspar let out a sigh and slumped in his seat. "We're going to be here forever, aren't we?"

"Possibly," Linhardt replied, but there was a smile in his tone that filled Caspar with just enough energy to get out of his seat and get searching.

It didn't quite take forever (just a pretty long time of squinting at very poor calligraphy), but eventually they found it - a tiny, barely marked place in the southwestern Oghma Mountains, well into Imperial territory. Staring at the map, Caspar frowned. Something about the location looked familiar. "There it is," he said, pointing it out.

Linhardt smiled. "Now for the peak of academic research," he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "We're going to see if we can find the site on a map and just hope for the best."

This, at least, took a lot less time. Within minutes, Caspar's face broke into a smile. "I think I've got it," he said. "It's called Byrise." Now _that_ sounded familiar, but he still couldn't work out why. "Hang on, I'll look this place up."

Linhardt shot him a grateful glance and pillowed his head in his arms. It really had been a long day, so Caspar _definitely_ couldn't blame him. Unfortunately for his hopes for a quick nap, Caspar worked out exactly what the connection was within a single search. "Oh!" he said. Linhardt sat up a little jerkily. "It's a really good site for historical reenactments. Kind of a hub, they have a bunch of old shit there and loads of space."

"Fantastic," Linhardt drawled. "I cannot wait to deal with period costume and roleplaying when I'm trying to do an investigation."

"Aw, I swear it won't be that bad," Caspar said. "I'll message the guy who organises the group I've attended there and see if there's a good place _without_ daily jousts for us to stay."

"Please," Linhardt said, but Caspar caught the tiny smile on his face as he put his head down again; he didn't mind really.

'Hey Ferdinand,' he wrote. 'For cool and very secret reasons, I need to stay in Byrise for a bit. Do you have any recommendations of where we could stay?'

The response came within moments: 'Archbishop Inn,' Ferdinand replied. 'They don't take group bookings, especially not for LARP, but it'll work just fine unless you have a big group.'

'Perfect, thx,' he replied, looking up at Linhardt just as he sent the message off. "Alright!" he said. "When do you want to go?"

"Do you even need to ask?" Linhardt asked, and Caspar shook his head with a grin; he booked a room for the following night.

* * *

Linhardt's excitement was palpable as Caspar drove them out towards Byrise. Caspar couldn't blame him; he was excited too, ready to find out as much of the truth as he could about these people that lived so long ago but fixed the course of their lives without even knowing it. "What d'you think we'll find?" he asked, as they crested a hill that led into the valley Byrise was nestled in.

"Hopefully plenty," Linhardt said, his eyes fixed on the horizon, "though I know not all of it will be useful. If it has the kind of historical - or ahistorical - tradition you ascribed to it, we'll find plenty of nonsense and maybe a few things that actually fit into what we're looking for."

It definitely did have the historical tradition Caspar had described for it; when they arrived, Caspar spotted one group with horses tethered to a post, and just across the (cobbled!) road there were several individuals in tabards and what looked like Faerghan armour. But the thing that really stuck out was that the whole place was utterly tiny. There were barely more than a handful of streets leading from the village centre; if they were going to look anywhere, it wouldn't take long.

They got out of the car and went into the bed and breakfast Ferdinand recommended to them, and when Caspar went to check in he was greeted with a smile. "Welcome to the Archbishop Inn, the only place in Fódlan - bar palaces or monasteries - where Archbishop Byleth is confirmed to have stayed."

"Do you have any proof?" Linhardt asked, leaning in over the table.

"Of course," she said, a bright smile forming on her face; clearly she was used to such demands. "We have them specially preserved, you see. It's quite a miracle, seeing as Byleth only became the Archbishop several years after this, but it's a verified artefact." When she put the book down on the table, it looked real enough.

Caspar shot Linhardt a look, and he nodded; it was real enough. "This is a fantastic piece of history you have here," he said. "Can you tell us much more about it?" After all, Linhardt von Hevring had known the Archbishop, once. Anything like this always fascinated Linhardt.

"Well, the village had a rocky history in that period, so it's not completely clear," she said, "but this is undeniably where the story began."

At those words, Linhardt's eyes lit up. He dumped his bag on the ground and went fishing within, clearly looking for something, so Caspar turned to the woman and checked them into their room. Just as she turned to pull the key from a shelf behind her, Linhardt made a triumphant sound. "I found it!" he said.

"Found what, Lin?" Caspar asked.

"It's the phrase Linhardt uses to describe their stopping point," he relayed, his eyes alight. "Excuse me, miss, but did you read that phrase somewhere in particular?"

She nodded. "It's the start of the second chapter of the Archbishop's biography," she explained.

"The anonymous piece," Linhardt said, probably half to himself. Caspar appreciated the explanation, though - sometimes, even with the areas he actually found interesting, it was difficult to keep track of all the old books. "The one written by someone close to them, presumably during their lifetime. It's interesting that they correspond, maybe I should-"

Linhardt's face was a little flushed from excitement, his eyes darting across something on his tablet screen. It was pretty cute, really. "Linhardt, maybe we should...?"

Linhardt's gaze rose first to Caspar and then back to the woman at the desk. "Perhaps you could help me with something else," he said, and then he actually _smiled_ at her. He really was hopeful that this would turn up some good information. "Would you have any knowledge on the people who lived in this village a long time ago?"

"Of course," the woman said. "This is my job, and I live here. I can't promise I know everything, but I know a fair amount. Ask away."

"I have information that an individual named Caspar von Bergliez lived and died in this town," he said. "If you know anything about that - anything at all - then I would be exceedingly grateful."

She hummed. "I'm not sure," she said. "I don't know anything _specific,_ or even if he ever did live here, but there's a Bergliez Road just a short distance from here. You could check that out?"

"Thank you," Linhardt said, grabbing the key for their room off the desk and turning immediately towards the building's exit. "Come on, Caspar! We have to see this."

"Now?" he asked, but he hoped that Linhardt could detect the fondness in his tone.

It was hard to keep Linhardt from sprinting to Bergliez Road, but it was a good job Caspar just about managed to hold him back; when they got there, there wasn't anything remarkable to be found. At the end of the street closer to them, there were several historical cafes, and Caspar spotted a touristy looking shop in the distance. Between overpriced food and overpriced postcards, there were a handful of roped off piles of rubble.

Linhardt came to a stop just in front of one of them. There was a brightly coloured board, slightly faded around the edges, which informed them that people used to live in the 'houses' - now a couple of piles of stone - but not much else. Something to do with chronology and architecture, something else about a fire and bandits.

"Nothing special," Caspar said. He supposed they shouldn't have expected anything, but that didn't stop the faint twinge in his heart when he looked upon the stones. They didn't even know if Linhardt or Caspar had lived there.

Still, Linhardt squeezed Caspar's hand and interlaced their fingers when he turned away. "There's a lot we might discover," he said, practically skipping back the way they came. "I can't wait to see what this village has in store."

* * *

The sun, filtered through the western window of Enbarr's largest bookshop, bathed the whole room in gold as Linhardt spoke the closing sections of his speech. "Thank you for listening for quite so long on this topic," he said. "When I told my colleagues I was going to write an entire book on the romantic relationship between these two men, some of them laughed at me - and I couldn't blame them. But we're here: this is 'Interpreting the Final Page: the Married Lives of Caspar von Bergliez and Linhardt von Hevring.'

"With that, I think we've reached the final page. But… speaking here with the evening sun streaming through the window, I rather prefer the notion that some things are infinite, and continue long beyond the time people cease to write of them."

Linhardt stepped off the stage, smiling, to applause - none louder than Caspar's. He was _so_ proud, and couldn't wait to tell Linhardt that in a hundred more words later. Just as he moved to slide into the seat next to him, however, Linhardt stopped and let out a quiet chuckle. He turned back towards the stage and hopped back onto it.

"It seems I forgot something," he admitted, and fortunately the audience around him laughed. "I have a lot of people to thank for everything to do with this book. My publishers, my long-suffering agent who spent months trying to get someone to publish this, my editor, and the university who provided the funding for my research. Also Linhardt and Caspar, the real authors of this book, without whose travels and affection for each other the work studied within this book would never exist."

As Linhardt spoke, his eyes drifted resolutely towards Caspar. Caspar had an inkling that this would happen, but he couldn't prevent the blush that rose to his face at that point. "And, finally, I have to thank the most important person for this book coming into being. Arguably, that's me, but I think it's someone else. My fantastic fiance, Caspar, doesn't get enough appreciation from me. He is endlessly kind and understanding, always puts up with my terrible moods and even more terrible nap decisions, and loves everything with his whole heart. I could not ask for a better person in my life.

"So I think a toast is in order," he said, his gaze directed once more towards the crowd. "None of you have drinks other than the handful of water bottles I see that I know _definitely_ have water in and nothing else, so I'll do it myself. The rest of you can join in if you want to look silly."

Caspar chuckled as Linhardt went over to the table just next to where he spoke, picking up the glass of water left for him. In turn, Caspar raised his bottle (which had chocolate milk in it, because he was an adult and took responsibility for his own dental health). "To all that is infinite," Linhardt said, waiting for the echoing reply. Once it faded away, his eyes fixed on Caspar again. "And to forever at your side, Caspar."

* * *

**3rd Verdant Rain Moon, Imperial Year 1214**

“You know, Caspar?” Linhardt’s voice drifted through the warm evening air. Caspar, just across the room from the writing desk, raised his head.

“What is it?” he asked. When he wrote, Linhardt tended only to check in when he was bored or wanted another perspective on something that had happened. If it was the former, Linhardt had firmly instructed him to ignore him.

“I think this might be forever.”

“What do you mean?” That was such a strange thing to just… say out of nowhere.

“It just seems implausible to me, somehow, that this is the only lifetime in my existence. The world is so large - it can’t be, surely. There must be more.”

“You know, Linhardt, sometimes you don’t make any sense to me.”

“Well that’s good, because I don’t think I make much sense to me either.” Linhardt’s tone was light, but there was something more to it as well.

“Maybe you’re right, though,” Caspar said. Thoughts like these didn’t occur to him often, but he always made the most of them when he could. The way Linhardt reacted was _always_ worth it. “I don’t think how much I care about you could be contained in a single lifetime.”

“...you sap.” Linhardt’s face, faintly pink, disappeared into a book. Caspar cackled; got him. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe we’re both wrong!”

“Nah, I think between the two of us, we get it right most of the time.” Caspar stood, making his way over to the stool that stood - usually unused - next to Linhardt’s chair. When he sat down, he nudged Linhardt’s shoulder with his own.

Linhardt looked up, and the expression on his face very nearly made Caspar melt. “Well, you’re right about that,” he said.

“Yep! So, what was that about forever?”

Linhardt nodded. “I think we might have found it. To our forever, Caspar.”

“To our forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, a comment and/or kudos is super appreciated. I also have a twitter over @samariumwriting where I talk about fic and other stuff!


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